Electronic presentations are used in a variety of contexts for conveying information. For example, a businessperson may use an electronic slide presentation to convey information about business performance. In another example, a teacher may use an electronic slide presentation to teach a lesson.
Presentation applications executing on personal computers are used to author and present electronic presentations. A typical presentation application presents an authoring interface that enables a user to edit slides in a presentation. The authoring interface may include a primary pane and a navigation pane. The primary pane contains an editable slide in the presentation. The navigation pane may include a series of thumbnail images of each slide in the presentation. A thumbnail image of a slide is a smaller version of the slide. A user of the presentation application can click on a thumbnail image of a slide to cause the primary pane of the authoring interface to display the slide for editing.
Electronic slide presentations may include a large number of slides and may contain information about several topics. For example, a physics teacher may use an electronic slide presentation to teach a lesson that includes slides about resistance, slides about capacitance, and slides about an upcoming exam.